The present disclosure generally relates to crash load management in vehicles, and, more particularly, to structures that provide a load travel path to a frontal crash load, minimizing floor deformations and thereby improving vehicular safety.
Structural integrity and stiffness of a vehicular underbody form fundamental factors to the vehicle's crash worthiness. Conventional vehicles, driven on internal combustion engines, include underbody structures that have at least one longitudinal beam, referred to as a sled runner, which generally extend all the way to the rear of the vehicle, providing a load travel path during a frontal impact. With the introduction of PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) and HEVs (hybrid electric vehicles), the underbody structure in application today has undergone changes in the overall shape and design. Such changes in the conventional design result from the incorporation of battery packs in PHEVs and HEVs, which are commonly stored within the vehicle's underbody structure. In particular, storage of battery packs causes the employed sled runners to be cut short, almost by half of their conventional length, leading to disruptions in a crash load's travel path, thus resulting in excessive vehicular floor deformations during a crash. This, thereby, limits the mandated crash safety scores, as well.
Typically, the size of the sheet metal employed to make the floor or the underbody of the vehicle is roughly 0.65 to 0.7 mm in thickness. With the sled runners being cut considerably short when accommodating the battery packs, a latter or a rear portion of the floor remains exposed to the crash load from the force experienced by the vehicle during a frontal impact. During a frontal crash, the incoming crash load travels beyond the sled runners, distributing itself into the minimally thick floor, resulting in excessive floor deformations caused by the inappropriate force travel path. In short, the floor being minimally thick does not sustain the crash load.
Thus, there remains a need to attain an improved crash load path in PHEVs and HEVs that can manage crash loads sufficiently enough to avoid excessive deformation to the vehicular underbody.